


Teacher's Pet

by DasMervin, MrsHyde (DasMervin)



Series: Strange Bedfellows [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Family Feels, Gen, Realization, Secret Identity, Snape Lives, Snape is still a teacher, adopted family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasMervin/pseuds/DasMervin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasMervin/pseuds/MrsHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isabel comes home after her first year at Hogwarts.  She didn’t write to her uncle after she went to the Headmistress’s office—she didn’t know what to say. But she still wondered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teacher's Pet

Oh, but it was good to be home.

Isabel heaved a happy sigh as she hopped up from where she had been crouching by the pots of soapwort and lugged the bag of fertilizer back to the corner of the greenhouse. She dropped it with a heavy _flump_ , and then stretched, working out all the cricks in her back before trotting over to the opposite side of the room and dropping down to her knees by the neat troughs of grasses that lined the east wall.

She’d missed this.

Not necessarily the plants. She got plenty of those in Herbology. Professor Longbottom was awfully nice and free with his praise, and he often awarded her points for already knowing how to take care of many of the first year plants.

Sometimes it bothered her, that she did so well in some of her classes as compared to the other first years—it wasn’t just in Herbology that she tended to stand out. Professor Robards, the ex-auror who taught DADA, was always very pleased with her knowledge of counterspells and shield charms (although she had been reprimanded for using a slightly ugly hex on her dueling partner one day, but as he had tried to trip her friend Una in the hall earlier, Isabel had thought he deserved it.) And Professor Slughorn (an old, round wizard who, despite his constant threats of retirement, was still teaching Potions after some sixty years in the position) was always holding her work up as exemplary, and had invited her to dinner with some other students on several occasions.

Isabel wondered sometimes if she wouldn’t have felt as badly if her performance was poor in her other classes, but the truth was that she was an above-average student across the board—with the noted exceptions of Herbology, DADA, and Potions. In those classes, she was the star.

Which was hardly surprising, as she’d been tutored in those subjects since she was five years old by her Uncle Greene. And when Uncle Greene taught, you learned—or else.

Really, she’d found First Year Potions almost laughably easy; Uncle Greene had already drilled her in every potion that was on the syllabus, and a good many that weren’t. And oftentimes, the recipes he’d taught her weren’t like those in the book—they were better.

She hadn’t taken credit for his work when Professor Slughorn had exclaimed over her cleverness; she’d owned up to the fact that she’d been brewing with her uncle for many years and that he’d taught her everything she knew.

Slughorn had chuckled. “My dear, despite what you may learn in Transfiguration, you can’t really make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he said. “Even the greatest teacher can’t teach someone who doesn’t have the raw talent, and you definitely have that!”

She’d blushed, pleased. Uncle Greene was reserved with his praise; it was nice to hear someone tell her that she was doing well.

And she had been, really; her marks had been very good, and she had returned home, flushed and happy with success, to let everyone know that she was leaving her own little stamp on the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Because as much as she loved school, she loved home more. Hogwarts was like something straight out of a fairy story, and everything about it had surpassed her wildest dreams. But all the magic in the world couldn’t make up for the people that you loved, and Isabel had often found herself plagued by homesickness. Oh, there were plenty of letters from home, from her brothers asking her to get them something magical, from her sisters asking if there were any good looking boys, from her parents telling her they missed her, and from her uncles, one telling her to mind her marks and the other to hurt any boy who tried anything with her.

But letters weren’t the same as people, and she couldn’t deny that she had been counting the days until she was able to ride the Hogwarts Express back to London, and from the train station she took the Floo connection to the Ministry for her Portkey, leaving the dreary cold of Britain and going back to the familiar sun and welcome warmth of Mexico. Uncle Greene had been waiting for her by the Portkey gate in the airport in Mexico City, as dour as ever, and after he’d managed to pry her off where she’d thrown herself at him, he’d Apparated them home.

She’d almost cried with happiness when she’d flung open the door to her house and had been promptly jumped by all of her brothers and sisters, and Mama and Papa were there too and hugged her and kissed her, and even Uncle Andrews had been sitting there waiting for her, and she was _home_.

She’d been the center of attention for nearly a week after arriving. Her brothers and sisters had all wanted to hear about her magic school. Spells and potions they were familiar with, but their eyes went wide and excited as she described the castle, the ghosts, the Whomping Willow, Quidditch—everything magical that they’d never seen.

Her parents were just as interested, although they’d wanted to hear about her classes as well, and if she’d made friends, how her teachers were, if they fed her well—all those sorts of parent-y things. She’d showed them her marks, told them about how wonderful Hufflepuff was (she’d been briefly disappointed not to be in Slytherin, which Uncle Greene said was the best House, but at least she wasn’t in Gryffindor, which he hated), and told them that Professor Slughorn had invited her to his dinners a few times.

Uncle Greene hadn’t been the least bit interested in “that nonsense.” He’d wanted to hear about classes. More specifically, he wanted to know what they were teaching her. The very next morning after she’d gotten home, he’d ordered her to bring him her notes, and then sat her down in the living room and had grilled her up one side and down the other about everything.

It was worse than exams, and not just because he asked her rapid-fire questions about everything she had learned that year and then some, but because if she didn’t know something, he would just give her that _look_ , and she would feel about two feet tall. 

It wasn’t always her fault that she didn’t know the answer to something he asked. Sometimes when he had glared at her over the tops of his reading glasses when she had admitted her ignorance, she stubbornly insisted that they simply hadn’t covered that topic this year. His frown would deepen at that, but it wasn’t directed at her, but rather at her notes, and after a few muttered deprecations about the falling standards of education, he would briskly tell her that they would just have to cover that over the summer, and then he would go back to his interrogation.

She felt like a wrung-out dishrag when it was over, but after leaving her in a tense silence as he shuffled through her notes one last time, Uncle Greene had at last given a grunt and told her that he supposed she would do.

High praise indeed from Uncle Greene, and she had basked in it all afternoon.

Uncle Andrews had been there for her impromptu exam as well, and although he had been uncharacteristically quiet during their exchange, afterwards it was clear that he had been vastly amused by the whole thing. When Uncle Greene had caught his mocking grin, he’d been very angry with him. Then again, Uncle Greene was angry with Uncle Andrews more often than not.

Uncle Andrews had been interested about her school as well, but not the in the same things that everyone else was. She’d been home a few days already and was sitting over in Uncle Greene’s living room when Uncle Andrews had called her over to where he was lounging in the armchair. She obediently sat on the floor at his feet, and then it was his turn to ask her all about her year away at school. But he didn’t really ask about magic or classes.

He wanted to know if she’d been in detention—“No, Uncle Andrews,” “Good, a pro never gets caught”—if she had gotten in any good fights with anyone—“No, Uncle Andrews, but I did hex a boy in Defence class,” “Oooh, nervy—I like it”—if she could turn Uncle Greene into a toad for him yet—“No, Uncle Andrews, we don’t learn human Transfiguration until Sixth Year,” “That’s crap”—if she’d pulled any pranks on her teachers—“Of course not, Uncle Andrews, I like my teachers,” “Don’t be ridiculous, Izzy—any teacher from that place has a pole up his ass and needs to be pranked”—and if she had a boyfriend.

Uncle Greene had looked merely annoyed by the majority of this line of questioning, but he had given a horrible scowl when Uncle Andrews asked that last one. Isabel had rather been under the impression that Uncle Greene didn’t like hearing her or her sisters talk about boys—which was a problem, since it seemed like that was all Ro and Mel talked about these days—so she scolded Uncle Andrews that she didn’t have time for boys, she certainly wasn’t old enough for that, and anyway, boys were too silly.

He’d laughed, and even Uncle Greene seemed pleased by her answer, until Uncle Andrews went on. “Well, I suppose the two of us are proof enough of that—but just because you’re not going to make a purchase doesn’t mean that you can’t inspect the merchandise.” He gave her a sly smile. “Don’t even try and tell me that you haven’t been checking out all those handsome foreign wizards.”

And unbidden, an image of brilliant green eyes and a crooked smile popped into her mind, and she felt her cheeks warm and started to say, “Well—” before she caught herself, stopping short and hoping they hadn’t noticed.

Which was silly—of course they had. Uncle Greene had given her a sharp look, and Uncle Andrews had laughed. “Spill it, kid—who is it?”

Blushing and embarrassed, she’d admitted, “Well—the Head Boy is awfully handsome.”

Uncle Greene had harrumphed in displeasure and went back to reading the evening news. Uncle Andrews had raised his eyebrows. “Going for the authority figures—very shrewd,” he said. “And he’s good looking, too—I can already tell that you are using me as your model for the ideal man—smart girl.” There was a disgusted scoff from behind Uncle Greene’s newspaper. “Well, are you going to go three for three?” Uncle Andrews went on, ignoring him. “Does he have money?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway—he was a Seventh Year and has left school for good.”

“Money always matters,” said Uncle Andrews sagely. “And I’ve taught you well enough to know to go for it. I’m betting your instincts are good enough that this Dickhead Boy of yours is probably loaded.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “So—what’s this character’s name?”

“Al Potter.”

There was a flurry of crackling paper and a choking sound; Isabel jumped, startled, and turned to find Uncle Greene staring at her with a look of appalled disbelief, and she shrank where she sat. Uncle Andrews, on the other hand, looked utterly delighted. “ _Al Potter?_ ” he hooted, beaming. “You have the hots for _Al Potter_?!” He gave a loud shout of laughter. “Isabel, allow me to congratulate you on your excellent taste. You have surpassed even my exacting standards when it comes to men. Now, when you go back to school next year, you find this boy, and you marry him, and you bring him home to live with us and make sure that his family visits every Christmas!”

“Uncle Andrews! I’m twelve!” she exclaimed.

“So? You’re Mexican.”

She glared at him, but her frown was nothing compared to the white-faced look of utter fury that he was getting from Uncle Greene. Uncle Andrews seemed to know it, too, and he was grinning madly in his direction. Uncle Greene was quivering with outrage, but he said nothing, just stood and stormed up the stairs, sweeping into his workroom with a slam of the door.

Isabel stared after him, not entirely sure what had just happened. She was well used to the sometimes very strange exchanges between her uncles (although she did wonder how on earth both of them seemed to recognize Al Potter). But honestly, it wasn’t the first thing they’d ever been in a tiff over, and certainly not the strangest, so when Uncle Andrews told her to tell him all about Al Potter, she put it out of her mind, settled herself back at his feet, and obediently told him what little she knew.

For that whole first week, she’d been poked and prodded and questioned, everyone wanting to know everything, but gradually things began to die down; before long, she was just another one of her siblings, just how she liked it. Her mother put her back on dish-duty, she and her sisters would go to the market, her brothers teased her about all the foreign slang she’d picked up and the way she talked like Uncle Greene since she got back home from Hogwarts, and she would be included in the group her father would take to help clean Uncle Andrews’s house.

And today was the first time since she got home that she’d gotten to go upstairs and help Uncle Greene with his work.

He was tending his plants today; she’d been over helping Sheldon and Nate and Stevie with Uncle Andrews’s groceries when Uncle Greene had appeared. She hadn’t seen him since Uncle Andrews had made him so angry, so she’d been startled when he was suddenly there, throwing open the front door with a bang and ordering her to come over next door and help him. She’d gone happily; working in Uncle Greene’s greenhouse was one of her favorite pastimes. In the end all five of them had followed Uncle Greene back to his house for lunch, and then afterwards Isabel had gone upstairs with him, just the two of them.

Of course, the whole afternoon Uncle Greene had been quizzing her on the properties of the plants, both how to tend them and their uses in potions, but she didn’t mind. She’d always thought him a very good teacher, even if he wasn’t as nice about it as some. She’d doubly thought so after her first year at Hogwarts, after she’d realized that she was so well prepared. Professor Slughorn had once jokingly accused her of peeking in his notes—she seemed to know the first year syllabus better than he did.

Uncle Greene had subsided in his questioning as he gathered shrivelfigs from the tree in the corner, obviously concentrating on selecting only the fruit that was ready. Isabel stopped what she was doing and looked at him for a moment. She did know the syllabus backwards and forwards, as it turned out. And that was because of her uncle—he had taught her all those potions years ago, and in the same order as she had learned them at school—almost as if he knew the first year Potions syllabus.

“I missed working up here,” she told him, tying a bit of twine around the little bunch of knotgrass for drying. “It’s different than class.”

Uncle Greene _hmmed_ vaguely in acknowledgement. She didn’t expect anything more from him, so she went on. “I knew more than the other students in Herbology,” she told him, “because I’ve been working up here for so long.” She smiled a little to herself, and then admitted, “There’s a nasty boy in my house—Ozias Smith, and he’s very full of himself—and he was mouthing off in Herbology, and since I knew that if you squeeze fanged geraniums down by the sepals that it keeps them quiet, I picked one without anyone noticing and dropped it down his robes.” She gave her twine a satisfying yank. “For all his talk, he didn’t know how to stop it from biting him on the ars—bum.”

She looked over at Uncle Greene; his expression was admonitory, but she could see the tiny gleam in his eye. “Did anyone find out it was you?” he asked. She shook her head, and he grunted again and went back to his work, and it was with a grin that she gathered up her bundles of grass and ran it in to the workroom.

She was back and cultivating the knotgrass when Uncle Greene asked, “Is that the same boy that you hexed in Defence?”

“Yes,” she answered, and scowled as she loosened the soil around the base of the grass. “I don’t know why Professor Robards was mad about that—it was just that funny toenail hex you taught me.”

Uncle Greene gave a quiet growl in his throat. “You’ll find that some people have a distressingly black-and-white approach to things,” he said. “That hex is harmless—but some will take it into their heads that even harmless spells are ‘Dark,’ simply because they don’t understand it. And there is nothing you can do to convince them otherwise,” he added as he dropped a handful of shrivelfigs into the bowl beside him. “That being the case, you probably shouldn’t use that hex anymore.” He flicked his eyes over to her briefly. “At least, not when anyone is looking.”

Isabel grinned, and got up to drag the bag of bonemeal over to the grass trough. “You weren’t in any other trouble this year, were you?” Uncle Greene asked her.

She shook her head. “No, sir,” she said, and he nodded once. She dug the points of the cultivator deep, mindful of the roots, like Professor Longbottom told her. “Well, I did have to go to the Headmistress’s office once,” she said, and Uncle Greene gave her a sharp look until she clarified, “but it wasn’t because of anything I did—I just got caught in the middle of a bad fight in the hallways.”

Uncle Greene snorted. “The rule against magic in the hallways is probably the one most flouted at Hogwarts—I don’t doubt you’ll see many more of those.” He fixed her with a look. “And if you feel the need to involve yourself in such an altercation, at least have the sense to do it where you won’t get caught.”

Isabel smirked and nodded, and silence fell as he took his bowl of shrivelfigs back in to the workroom and she sprinkled meal at the base of the grasses, working it into the dark soil.

Uncle Greene returned and shoved the great pot holding the shrivelfig tree back towards the wall before moving on to the next row of plants, his movements practiced and confident, and her own hands slowed as she watched him. She forced her eyes back to her own work when he turned, and she worried at her lip for a moment, turning up the soil in a rather aimless manner, before she finally steeled herself to speak. “While I was waiting for the Headmistress, I spoke to some of the portraits in her office.”

Uncle Greene’s hands never faltered in their work, his gaze never leaving the small tray of bouncing bulbs in front of him. “Did you?” he said, sounding thoroughly uninterested.

“Yes.” She looked down at the dark soil beneath the tines of her fork. “I talked to Headmaster Dumbledore a little,” she said, and then took a breath and added, “and to Headmaster Snape.”

The smooth motions of her uncle’s hands ceased. For a moment he was perfectly still, and then he turned, and her breath hitched as he looked at her. Just looked, his eyes dark and fathomless and glittering, eyes that no picture could ever truly capture.

Isabel didn’t look away. Only Uncle Andrews could meet his gaze when he looked like that; her brothers and sisters and her papa and even her mother couldn’t meet his eyes, but she did, breathless and unsure, because she had to _know_.

And looking in his eyes, she did.

She _knew_.

“I trust,” Uncle Greene spoke suddenly, his rough voice a whipcrack in the silence, “that you kept any speculations with regards to _that_ to yourself?”

Isabel turned deliberately back to her gardening. “What would there be to say?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders. “Professor Snape died before I was born.” And she kept working, but looked at Uncle Greene out of the corner of her eye.

“Exactly,” he said gruffly, and he turned his back on her and went back to wrestling with the bulbs.

Neither one of them said anything else all afternoon as they finished with the plants, beyond the occasional brusque command for Isabel to hand her uncle something from across the room or her quiet assent as they chopped and pickled and preserved what they had gathered. Uncle Greene didn’t look at her, either, and so she was quiet, no more talk of school.

When the last jar was labeled and shelved and all their tools back in their proper places, Uncle Greene paused, and for a moment seemed to want to speak, but then he just turned away and went toward the door.

“Uncle Greene?” Isabel said.

He stopped and turned, giving her his familiar look of impatient inquiry but this time with a hint of warning, but she just crossed the distance between them in three quick steps and threw her arms around his middle.

He went all stiff, like he always did when she hugged him, as if he were about to push her away or shout at her, but then he relaxed, and as she buried her nose in the soft material of his shirt and smelled the comforting scents of soil and plants and his brews, she felt his hand come up to rest lightly on her head.

She tilted her face and looked up at Uncle Greene, at his sharp black eyes and his short grey hair, and at the place where his scrubby beard and high collar met, she could just see the tiny white lines of the scars that she knew covered his throat. She smiled up at him. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she whispered.

The hand in her hair went very still, and he blinked, looking down at her as if that was the craziest thing he had ever heard. And then, ever so slowly, one corner of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile. It wasn’t one of those nasty smiles like he and Uncle Andrews were always giving each other; it was one of his rare, _real_ smiles, and in an almost wondering voice he said, “So am I.”

Isabel beamed up at him before pressing her cheek against his middle, scrunching her eyes closed and feeling him breathing. He allowed it for a moment more, his long fingers tangling in the hair on the back of her head, before he dropped his hand and stepped away. “Come along,” he said, his voice brisk as he looked at the watch on his wrist. “It’s nearly suppertime; we should go downstairs and make sure that Andrews and your brothers don’t burn the house down.”

Isabel giggled. “Yes, Uncle Greene,” she said, and followed him downstairs.

Uncle Andrews was still there; Nate and Stevie had disappeared, probably off to start a fight somewhere. But Sheldon was there—he was always there if Uncle Andrews was there—and he was sitting across from him and laughing uproariously at whatever story Uncle Andrews was telling. He looked up at the sound of their footsteps. “Ah—Professor—is school out?” he asked with a smirk.

“Piss off,” Uncle Greene growled.

“No,” said Uncle Andrews, leaning amiably back into his chair. “It’s suppertime—feed me, Seymour.”

Uncle Greene glared at him. “I think not—I already fed you and your little entourage once today,” he said.

Uncle Andrews huffed, in that sort of pouty way that always seemed to both please and irritate Uncle Greene. “Fine, then—kid,” he commanded, “we are going out to eat.” Sheldon stood and obediently went to the doorway, and Uncle Andrews followed.

Isabel stayed where she was, standing by Uncle Greene, who didn’t move either, merely stood with his arms crossed in disapproval, until Uncle Andrews paused at the doorstep and said, “Well? Are you coming, or do you have to grade papers?”

Uncle Greene gave a rough, irritated snort, but he followed Uncle Andrews to the door, grabbing his hat and turning to raise one eyebrow at Isabel.

Happily, she dashed after them and out into the late evening sunshine, bouncing down the front step and pattering along after Uncle Greene. She had to skip a bit to keep up with his ground-eating strides, but as she skittered along beside him, he looked down at her, and she saw the corner of his mouth quirk, just a little, and she grinned back.

It was good to be home.


End file.
